Halloween Costumes - Details Part 3 - The Vogue Vest

Vogue Vest 7488

The Vogue vest 7488, version B. I made mine out of a home dec weight velvet, or velour (I'm ignorant of the differences). The fabric was pretty thick at the seams and gave me a couple problems. One was that the instructions want you to line the vest and pull it through the shoulder seams and then fold over the lining and stitch it closed by hand. Since my seams were so thick, I didn't have enough lining fabric to do this. So, what I did instead was to sew the seams as normal and then trim them down. I then covered them with ribbon to hide the exposed seams.

Shoulder seam covering

The double breast is supposed to have buttons for the closure but I found a very cool washer "thing" at the hardware store that I painted copper that I wanted to use instead. So since I couldn't make buttons or buttonholes I decided to use snaps as the closure. Each washer had a single stitch on each side to hold it on, using the matching topstitching thread. It matched perfectly was was very hard to tell that it was stitched on. Behind each washer I stitched a snap that corresponded with the opposite side.

Front of vest

Copper painted washer

Snaps

And finally instead of using a buckle for the back, I ended up using a large hook and eye, leftover from another project, stitched on with the matching topstitching thread.

Back closure

The vest, is a rather involved pattern, but the result is wonderful. I will make this again, for another Steampunk event, or just for a fancy shindig.

Halloween Costumes - Details Part 2 - The Vest and Shirt

The Vest

The vest is a vintage 1979 McCalls 5297. It came in a smaller size than what I am, but being the industrious gal I am, I decided to try grading it. Scary eh? It was to me at first as well. But, following a few online tutorials, I was able to find that I needed to add more to the bust (since a woman's body has the most area there) rather than the back and/or sides. Doing so brought it up to my size, but I still had to do a full bust adjustment to it for it to fit right. It took even more pinning after I sewed the FBA to get it just right, since it had to be pretty much a perfect fit because of how fitted it actually needed to be. The vest is unlined, but does have a facing around the whole edge. I did make a muslin first to see where I needed to take in seams or add them and found that I had mismeasured somewhere in the grading for the bottom facing. I had to re-draft the bottom facing to fit, but it wasn't a terrible setback. Just an extra few hours.

As I mentioned in a previous post, the vest was made out of some $1 fabric. Now that I think about it, I may have gotten it from a thrift store rather than Wal-Mart since I found a piece that is identical a few weeks ago in a thift store. Sometimes I don't know where all this fabric comes from! But anyways, it's made from the wrong side of some lovely twill. I chose the wrong side because it was a shade darker than the right side and I wasn't too worried about doing things the "right way" for a costume.

The black lace on the bottom edge was actually one of the most expensive items I bought for the outfit. I did use a coupon for it, but it was still pretty expensive for my way of life. But, I do think it was worth every penny and am very happy that I chose to add it. I think it lent an air of "old time" to it that was perfect for a Victorian aristocrat.

The Shirt

The shirt is made from Simplicity 3990 and is the version that the model is wearing. This was one of the very cool B, C, D cup options that Simplicity has come out with. The fitting wasn't even an issue in the bust area and other than the pleating (which did take a while), this shirt was quick to make up since I didn't have to do an FBA on it. There are some minor fitting issues that I will tweak in future garments made from this pattern, but it's nothing I can't fiddle with and try and change.